Free tutorials website Khan Academy has launched new computer science tutorials designed to teach anyone programming. The Khan Academy Computer Science site throws you right into the code behind a range of projects, so you can learn by experimenting with the JavaScript code.

John Resiq, noted creator of the jQuery JavaScript library, is heading the project. In his blog post about the new program, Resig explains the philosophy behind this kind of learning environment:

When I look back at how I became interested in programming, or ask other programmers about how they started to program, the answer is very frequently: "I was given a [Basic/QBasic/Python] compiler and a bunch of programs and I wanted to understand how it all worked so I could write my own!" It was only after digging in to the code that the student wanted to understand how to tackle certain programmatic challenges – but they then did so with great gusto!

The Khan Academy Computer Science program is a distillation of this process into it's purest form: Directly encouraging experimentation, exploration, and creativity as a direct gateway to deeper learning.

Khan Academy joins several other free "learn to code" services, including previously mentioned Codecademy. The difference is that Khan Academy's tutorials are really self-directed—they're more like playgrounds, although walkthroughs are also available for more complex topics.